We continue from Pineapple Promenade.

The Honey Bee-stro (get it…like a French bistro…I am dying of laughter here…) returns with even more punny hilariousness for its fourth year. I doubt it features much on the French side of the culinary landscape, but a lack of killer bees would be okay, too.

Ah yes, a better time, with the monorail and the people circa about a year ago. But the 2020 picture does a nice job of showing the Bee-stro’s exact location and foreshadows our next Kitchen, Flavor-Full, which is located just about where the picture ends on the right. Helpful, I know. The one positive(?) this year with the monorail not running (yet) is that the photographers won’t have to camp out and wait for it to pass along above the flower beds for pictures with a little additional kinetic energy. It’s always funniest when the monorail is down and we just stand there eyeballing each other suspiciously for a half hour, pretending like our phones are blowing up. Or you can yell, “MONORAIL!” at us and it basically turns us into a pack of Dug the Dogs chasing squirrels. But not this year! Probably!

Continue reading “Honey Bee-stro Review Epcot Flower and Garden Festival”

Pineapple Promenade is one of a couple of kiosks that I neglected to photograph this year, as I was too busy shaking my fists at the menu prices and figuring out what on earth we were getting from the five booths in the vicinity. So you’ll just have to deal with what last year looked like for a second. Since nobody is really ordering anything, the more things change, the more they stay the same anyway.

Festival Day is always a little hectic. I also stood there contemplating for some time whether I would go to a Pineapple Promenade given the opportunity. Outside of Epcot, nobody has ever invited me to a pineapple promenade. You could easily say people haven’t invited me to a lot of things, including many events where one would assume my position would be, or should be, included, if not required, so that doesn’t prove much. If I were to make my own pineapple promenade, we might look at it for 30 seconds before going back inside. After all, neither of us probably needs our feet or shoes stuck with fruit spikes that I imagine had been a great defense mechanism against predators until humans came along and just used a knife and then some whacky specialized machine to cut them down. So it’s a no on the homemade Pineapple Promenade for the foreseeable future, but Epcot’s remains, without much of a pineapple barrier in your way as you make your purchase.

On the other hand, a late springtime stroll along the promenade of the Dordogne in France might be nice, or perhaps the splashy-splash of the Barcelona Waterfront, or meandering the the beaches in Nafplion, Greece with the rich blue and green hues of the water glistening from the walkway. I have enough trouble trying to convince anybody to come over as it is. Something tells me that a man-made, treacherous maze of spiky fruit wouldn’t be a good way start to a fresh series invitations. “So I have these Pineapples…about 400 in all….and they’re all on the ground…”

All three food items return alongside the ever-popular Frozen Desert Violet Lemonade and Dole Whip with Fanta poured around the base of the cup if you really want to throw caution to the wind. We also see a mashup of alcoholic offerings.

Continue reading “Pineapple Promenade Review Epcot Flower and Garden Festival”

Our day at Magic Kingdom comes to what has to be its conclusion as we head to Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Café for lunch, which WDWNT named the best quick service in Walt Disney World by a panel of “experts” that I assume made their decision based on the sheer number of entryways. You could make the argument that convenience goes a long way, though I’m not sure anyone brought up that point at the time, instead focusing on the fact that it has the one piano-playing alien in front of the one room serenading guests with bops such as “Won’t You Substitute Those Fries with a Cuties® Mandarin Orange Available in Your Grocer’s Produce Section?” and “Hello Bloggers, I Sure Hope There Isn’t Anything New on the Menu Today.”

Ordinarily, you can head inside Cosmic Ray’s across from Tomorrowland Speedway or Auntie Gravity’s in Tomorrowland. More doors invite guests inside across from Mad Tea Party, and an additional main entrance/exit is across from the old Merida Meet and Greet, among about 25 others. Then just about every other floor-to-ceiling window serves as a prospective door, as long as you’re willing to go full Tasmanian Devil on it. Just make sure you break the glass as you take a powerup and burst through. There are few things more embarrassing than running into a wall only to be denied and fall flat backwards. Disney Food Blog may even stand over your incapacitated body, squeeze a Mickey Sundae between their fingers, and say, “AJ sends her regards. At least you’ll have your more time for cast to put your mobile order together as you apply tourniquets wherever necessary. And the soft serve is pretty good.

Few people know this, but there’s also a bit of a “Mission Impossible” situation on the roof, where you can unlatch a door, put on your latex body suit, fit your cable, and lower yourself down into the establishment just above the sautéed onions. I don’t know if the latex is necessary, it just “feels” a little more Spy Kids 3D. I only know about this roof entry because I stepped out on my balcony about a year ago (or was it eight?) and there was Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Café waiting for me just outside, with the neon lights of the topping bar illuminated and the promise of unlimited pickles on my burger making my dinner choice easy. You’ve certainly had plenty of time to consume the previous update, but you can pull it up here, which would link back to the previous updates.

Currently, the Mission: Impossible approach may be your most straightforward approach. Those able to use mobile order on the Disney World app are virtually required to do so at Disney-operated quick services that offer it, which is the vast majority inside the theme parks. With a mobile order, you’re only allowed to enter Cosmic Ray’s  on the Fantasyland side across from what would ordinarily be the Merida meet, and along the path that we intially used to enter the Park and head to Seven Dwarfs Mine Train.

Continue reading “Disney’s Magic Kingdom Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Café Chicken Sandwich Review, Tron Construction Update, and a Park Hop”

Our day at Magic Kingdom continues in what I’m sure is not the first part of this series. If you’re wondering how we’ve managed to arrive at the dreaded “line starts here” sign for “it’s a small world,” facing the opposite direction of the attraction’s entrance at 11:25am on a day with below-average waits, you can pull up the previous part, which links back to what could be anywhere from one to seventeen previous parts. At least if history is any indication. So far, our day has gone relatively well, benefitted in large part by the early start available to guests using the walkways from the Grand Floridian and Contemporary Resorts.

Those walkways offer a lot more control over the arrival experience, since you won’t need to rely on any form of Disney’s transportation options, all of which are currently operating at limited capacities and often experience delays. Magic Kingdom typically opens as the first couple of buses, holding a total of maybe a hundred guests, pull up to their designated unload stations. They’ll be delayed further by temperature and bag checks. At that point, cast members will get the go-ahead to begin checking temperatures and bags at the Transportation and Ticket Center parking lot across the water from the Park’s entrance. At best, they’ll arrive five to ten minutes after guests using the walkways have an opportunity to head inside. More and more guests will arrive as seats on the buses, ferries, and monorails become available, making that head start all the more important when it comes to short early morning waits. By using one of the walkways, you choose how early you leave the room and where you’ll be in line waiting for the Park to allow guests inside. That’s typically 30 to 45 minutes prior to the officially-posted time, as Disney attempts to spread out the crowds and get as many people as possible over to the Park in time for what is typically a 9am open.

Since I was feeling fancy, I opted to slip on my Louie Vuitton moccasins and enjoyed my scenic saunter over from the Grand Floridian. I’d go into detail about which shirt I was wearing, but we both probably have a good idea already. Guests arriving from American Steel in the opposite direction enjoyed a slight head start. About 10x more people use the Contemporary’s walkway and Disney begins processing them by checking bags and temperatures and moving them closer to the entrance earlier to make space for more people along the path. That didn’t end up causing us much delay as we glided towards Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, even without the usual spring that my Nikes provide.

Speaking of the Mine Train, while we’re evidently concerned about the destruction of our planet over at EPCOT via “attractions” like “Awesome Planet,” that worry doesn’t seem to transfer over to the horrors and ever-present dangers of mining for precious stones at Magic Kingdom. And I’m not sure we ever find out what Snow White and the Dwarfs are planning to do with what must be hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gems (adjusted for inflation) that they’ve apparently confiscated as we pass during the few seconds in the one show scene that wasn’t cut from the final product.

The Evil Queen may be engrossed in her own vanity, but you would expect that she could be bought off with several carts of diamonds and rubies. At a minimum, she could trade the rocks for enough money to legally change her name from something a little less flattering than Grimhilde, and then flaunt that fortune and a solid week’s worth of DVC points to snare just about anyone into a long-term, loving relationship. On the other hand, there may be something to say for aging potions and the simplicity of murder via fruit. It would just be unfortunate if she tried to hand the poison apple to Snow White, only for the lonely princess to refuse it because the organic sticker fell off in transit. What do you do when someone won’t even believe your Whole Foods receipt, which clearly states you spent 20 cents more per pound than the garden variety of Fuji. We may be straying slightly from the plot of the 1937 film, but anything can happen in a live-action remake.

Back to what matters, this is where we find ourselves after completing the following:

1. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train: 8:42am – 8:56am
2. Peter Pan’s Flight: 8:59am – 9:07am
3. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: 9:09am – 9:16am
4. Haunted Mansion: 9:19am – 9:52am
5. Jungle Cruise: 9:57am – 10:28am
6. Pirates of the Caribbean: 10:30am – 11:11am

Continue reading “An Early Afternoon of Touring Magic Kingdom”

We continue from Part One, where we began the day by walking over from the Grand Floridian Resort via the walkway that opened back in November with our first stops of the day at Seven Dwarfs Mine Train and Peter Pan’s Flight. Coincidentally, I think November was also around the time that post was published. We followed that up in Part Two, with visits to The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh and Haunted Mansion, along with a general discussion about how you might want to organize your day given current crowd conditions.

So far, things have gone about as well as we could hope, with the exception of an unexpected 20-minute delay on Haunted Mansion due to some particular maleficence from our ghoulish friends. Sometimes I wonder if our ghost host takes roll each morning and shuts things down to send out the search party if they can’t locate all 999 happy haunts. I don’t think I would be a prime candidate for haunt 1,000 as I’m just about the only thing less reliable than Splash Mountain. At least you know you can usually find me at one of the three local Ale Houses scaring children and eating what’s left of their Zinger Mountain Melts. And I’m not even technically dead yet.

I was on the ride in about three minutes, but spent more time than I would have liked sitting in the graveyard scene. I suppose it’s a good thing they didn’t bury me there or it would be even more difficult to proceed with the rest of the day. On the other hand, I doubt the time it would have taken to claw my way back up to the land of the living would have adversely affected the website’s publishing schedule. Thus far, this is where we’ve been:

1. Seven Dwarfs Mine Train: 8:42am – 8:56am
2. Peter Pan’s Flight: 8:59am – 9:07am
3. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh: 9:09am – 9:16am
4. Haunted Mansion: 9:19am – 9:52am

Back to the task at hand, we basically have two options come 10am, or one hour after Magic Kingdom typically opens. We could hit a number of low-priority attractions in succession and not wait too long at each. We could then have lunch, take a break, and return in the last few hours with hopes of hitting some of the higher priorities when waits should be a little lower. Our other option is to try to experience some moderate priorities now with waits that will hopefully be about half of their later afternoon peaks.

Looking back at our wait time time chart, you’re looking at spending 25+ minutes in line from 10:15am through 5:15pm, but the waits do fall after that, even with Park Hopping after 2pm back in the mix potentially sending new people over and those who arrived earlier in the day head to the Ale House:

Continue reading “Disney’s Magic Kingdom Late Morning Adventureland Touring with Jungle Cruise, Pirates, and Crowds”